Media And Ethnic Conflict
Konstanty Gebert Media and ethnic conflict Overview The media are always ethnic, in the sense that, being produced in the language of a given ethnic group, they unavoidably strengthen the reader’s identification with that group. Historically, the development of the press in 19th century Europe solidified existing nationalisms (as in the case of the French and German press after the war of 1870 and in the run-up to WWI), facilitated the survival of threatened ones in nations deprived of their own state (Polish-language press in partitioned Poland), and especially – facilitated the development of new national identities (Lithuanians, Czechs). This rule holds true as well for borderline cases (the Zionist press in early 20th century Europe, transforming Jewish selfidentity from religious to national; contemporary Romany and Kurdish media stimulating a sense of nationhood in nations afflicted by a lack of a unifying language; the Rwandan Radio Mille Collines broadcasting in the Kinyarwanda common both to Tutsis and Hutus, and articulating a program of Hutu genocide of the Tutsis). It remains valid even in many contemporary democratic multiethnic societies (witness the role of Quebec’s French media in promoting separatism). Yet on the other hand the aspiration of media is to be universalistic, i.e. to cover not only the world of the ethnic group in whose language they are produced, but simply the world. The fact that the are produced in a certain language is not a matter of choice, since a universal non-ethnic language (with the failed exception of Esperanto) does not exist. Furthermore, although covering the entire world is for obvious reasons an unattainable ideal, it is rare to encounter media who voluntarily abandon their universalistic aspirations to lock themselves up in an ethnic ghetto. (The editor of a Hungarian daily in the ethnically mixed Romanian town of Timisoara told me in the early Nineties: “Of course we do not cover Romanian issues. If a reader wants...
View Full Essay
